Street artist Vhils' chiseled portraits
Lisbon street artist Alexandre Farto, who goes by the name Vhils, uses not a delicate brush, but drills and jackhammers to create arresting, very large-scale pieces.
Artist at Work
Old buildings are, in a way, a blank canvas for Vhils. Growing up in Lisbon, he used his lunch money to buy spray paint, and got his training on the streets doing graffiti, working quickly to evade authorities. (Yes, he got into trouble.)
Today, he uses drills and jackhammers to chip away at buildings to create portraits "hidden" within.
Lisbon
"You see the process as almost that of an artist-archaeologist?" asked CBS News' Seth Doane.
"Almost, yes," said Vhils. "A lot of the work that I do is the process of exposing and, in a way, painting with layers of time."
Lisbon
Vhils' mural in an former industrial section of Lisbon extends for several blocks.
"When I was 16, I started to realize that these walls were not just [covered with] posters – they were absorbing the big changes that the country went through these 30 years, overlaying all these things. And I was doing graffiti, so I was adding to all those layers as well, from the murals to advertising to graffiti to street art. It was like the walls were getting fatter each year, reflecting the changes that were going through the country."
Lisbon
"So one day I thought, 'Why am I just one more adding to all these kind of disposable society that is using the walls to communicate things and to push for consumption?' And I started to come up with the idea of extracting the layers and [working] with what's inside of the walls, by exposing all these layers of history."
Lisbon
"And by doing that, I started this process of carving and digging and destroying to create, in a way."
London
A Vhils mural, created on Leake Street in Lambeth, London in 2008, as part of the Cans Festival. It has since been destroyed.
London
"Scratching the Surface - The Phytology Project," at the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve at Middleton Street, London, May 2014.
Layers
Vhils at his studio, using old posters and billboards salvaged from the street, which he peels off in layers. "I like the fact that you go on a wall, and you have all this building up of layers of old posters that randomly and chaotically overlay each other. They kind of reflect the changes of that street and that wall in a way. Instead of painting with colors, I paint with layers of the passage of time, of the history of the city."
Studio
Up close, the work appears rough, random and chaotic … until, from a distance, a portrait emerges.
London
A Vhils mural, part of the "Tunnel 228" group show at Station Approach Road in London, May 2009.
"Usually I start with an image that I sometimes sketch. Sometimes I do a stencil. Sometimes I project [an image], sometimes I do freehand. So, it's a mix of processes. Takes a long time to get the shape and the proportions, and I go back and forth."
Hong Kong
A Vhils mural in Hong Kong.
"It's a fine line between art and vandalism," said Seth Doane.
Yes, in a way. It's my way to subvert the idea of the struggle that I had growing up doing graffiti that everyone was seeing you as a vandal, as someone that was not doing positive things to the city."
London
"Scratching the Surface," a solo exhibition at Lazarides Rathbone, in London, Summer 2009.
Sydney
Vhils at work in Sydney, Australia in 2013.
Sydney
Vhils' portrait of Australian environmentalist Jack Mundy, in the Rocks neighborhood of Sydney, created in 2013.
Moscow
A Vhils mural in Moscow, Russia.
Exeter
A Vhils wall mural in Exeter, Devon, England.
Bucharest
A Vhils mural in Bucharest.
Doane asked, "You like the crumbling aspect of things?"
"No, but I think they have more soul sometimes," Vhils replied.
Hong Kong
Vhils at work on a building mural in Hong Kong in 2015.
"When you get close, you get more into the details and everything that you are exposing, like very old layers, and get kind of the tones and the images that you're going to control. But then you need to step back to see them and how they create the composition as a whole. All the work I do talks a lot about perspective; your position changes the reading of whatever you want to see."
Hong Kong
Vhils' Hong Kong mural.
Hong Kong
Part of Vhils' solo exhibition "Debris," presented by the Hong Kong Contemporary Art (HOCA) Foundation in 2016.
London
Part of Vhils' solo exhibition "Devoid," in London, November 2012.
Mexico City
A Vhils mural created in Mexico City in 2012 for the All City Canvas Festival.
Public Art
Public art - a building decorated with Vhils' art.
"Things have really changed. Now you have the city commissioning you to destroy walls!" said Doane.
"Yeah, for sure. It really changed the perception."
Lisbon
But works created and exhibited outside in public spaces won't last. "I like the fact that the artwork will evolve – it will eventually fade away or be destroyed – because it makes it more human," Vhils said.
"The finishing touch on your work is, it's falling apart?" Doane asked.
"It's the nature of things. Nothing lasts forever."
Paris
From a 2018 exhibition of Vhils' work at Galerie Danysz in Paris.
Paris
From the Vhils exhibition "Urban Fragments, presented in Paris in Summer 2018.
Paris
From the Vhils exhibition "Urban Fragments, presented in Paris in Summer 2018.
Paris
"Instead of adding, I paint everything white and then I just expose these layers that are underneath. [It makes] us think about this process of change and how this process of change is actually affecting us."
Paris
From the Vhils exhibition "Urban Fragments, presented in Paris in Summer 2018.
Paris
From the Vhils exhibition "Urban Fragments, presented in Paris in Summer 2018.
Lisbon
For more info:
Lisbon street artist Vhils (Alexandre Farto)
By CBS News' David Morgan and Mikaela Bufano.